Transforming Long-Term Rural Health Through Prenatal Health Groups

Clínica Verde is a global healthcare organization that operates a prototype clinic in Boaco, Nicaragua with a focus on providing high-quality maternal and pediatric health services. What Clínica Verde offers is wholly unique among health centers for the underserved in this region: a staff guided by compassion and dignity for the poor; a clinic grounded in principles of sustainable and human-centered design; and the provision of nutrition and health education to enhance self-efficacy and preventive health. Our bold idea is to radically transform the long-term health of rural underserved communities in Nicaragua by scaling our most impactful preventive health program, our Prenatal Nutrition Program. Our program is designed to address social determinants of health and improve the outcomes of pregnant women and their children. Using interactive lessons to deliver a socio-behavioral change curriculum and regular checkups, we teach pregnant mothers about stages of fetal development, ways to care for their child in the womb, the importance of breastfeeding, and how to improve nutrition while pregnant and during their children's first 5 years. By focusing on mothers early in their pregnancy and creating powerful networks of support and education, our program captures children from gestation ensuring a healthy start and a lifetime of improved wellness behaviors. We aim to scale our program at 10 new government health posts in partnership with the Ministry of Health (MINSA).